Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by didip 2181 days ago
I am a huge fan of server side rendering with progressively enhancing Javascript. It simply feels right to me:

  * Search engine indexing works as expected.

  * Informational web pages don't need a lot of interactivity anyway.

  * You don't need crazy amount of build tools.

  * You don't need extra browser extensions just to debug the JS.

  * If for some reason there's one JS error, most of the pages are still functional.

  * I am unconvinced that SPA is faster than server side rendering.

  * Separation of concern is natural, business logic is handled by BFF, UI interaction is handled by JS.

  * If you super love Javascript, you can write the BFF in Node.js.
I am glad that Hey is another high profile app exemplifying this.

I can't wait for the pendulum to swing back.
1 comments
nojvek 2181 days ago
I guess it really boils down to.

Are you building an app? if so build an app. All UI is static hosted on CDN with content based urls that can be cached forever and all dynamic data coming in purely via REST apis.

If you are building a website, then serve html pages with sprinkled widgets here and there for interactivity.

Don't conflate the two. Users don't mind a slightly slow first load but super fast subsequent loads for an app. They'll love offline/PWA support, something that behaves like a native app. Search engines shouldn't care about indexing apps.

Web pages should behave like web pages. Search engines expect html as the format. Users expect the first load to be blazing fast. Proper href links, yada yada.

The worst is when its a half assed slow loading web page that wants to be an app, but is not an app.

link